The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to an upper layer protocol (ULP) selection based on detection of a lossless datacenter Ethernet network.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and/or networking systems.
One common networking system is known as the Ethernet. The Ethernet generally makes no provisions for reliability, sophisticated congestion management, or ordered delivery. In fact, as defined today, the Ethernet generally deals with data congestion, quality of service (QoS) throttling, and other networking realities and services by simply dropping data frames. As such, Upper Layer Protocols (ULPs) are expected to make provisions for reliability, if required. QoS refers to resource reservation control mechanisms rather than the achieved service quality. Thus, QoS is the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow.
As an example of a provision for reliability, initiator small computer system interface (iSCSI) is a storage solution typically deployed on Ethernet based internet protocol (IP) networks. Storage Area Networks (SANs) are characterized by a requirement for transmission reliability. Today, iSCSI relies on the Layer 4 transmission control protocol (TCP) to provide congestion management to avoid lost data packets and to guarantee transmission reliability to recover in the event of a dropped data packet. TCP congestion management and reliability capabilities, however, are not without cost. TCP adds additional per packet overhead for control data, acknowledgement processing, and etc. TCP also requires additional processing cycles/copies as data is moved from TCP to application memory buffers.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved ULP selection absent the disadvantages discussed above.